WCR This Week

Nun made films with Elvis

Mother Dolores

June 17, 2013

MARK PATTISON
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Dolores Hart is about to become a star again, 50 years after her last movie.

Hart – that's Mother Dolores, the prioress of a Benedictine women's monastery in Bethlehem, Conn. – has just had her memoir published a year after a documentary featuring her life as a cloistered nun picked up an Oscar nomination.

She is now promoting the book, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows.

The latest rush of celebrity is "amazing," Mother Dolores told Catholic News Service June 6 in Washington, where she was slated for a raft of interviews and a personal appearance.

Mother Dolores, in her Hollywood days, made only 10 movies, but she made them count. She was cast twice opposite Elvis Presley, in 1957's Loving You and 1958's King Creole.

Born in Chicago, she had always wanted to be an actress but after her successes on screen, she began to think life "had a bigger meaning," and maybe making movies was not the "end-all and be-all."

When she knew Elvis, she said, "he wanted to do something with his career. He wanted to get rich and interesting parts. They never gave him that. They just kept putting him in one girlie film after the other."